Photography, Birth and Death

     An image can bring life into an object, but also take the life away at the same time depending on what the subject is. By photographing a person you are keeping their memory and appearance alive even though they may have physically passed away. Pictures hold a strange control over time because they can make one moment last forever. And even if the image is of something that's already dead, photographing it can make it appear as if that body was alive for that photo. But by photographing a live person you are freezing them at that specific moment of time and sucking the motion out of their bodies. Our eye's as humans want to believe that what we see is real and when seeing an image of a person, whether dead or alive, we want to believe that at that moment everything in the image was alive. The subject of post - mortem photography has been looked at as a very controversial subject, but for some families before the year of 1880, photographing a family member after they had past could have been the only chance they had to capture the appearance of that person. Photography was new at the time and not everybody had the money to get photographs taken often so if someone suddenly passed away they only had that last chance to capture their image. But photography now a days can be used as a tool to make a certain moment such as birth memorable as well. It's amazing that a photo can be the only way to remember such important moments in our lives.